Crazy week!

Talk about a crazy week! This past week was filled with many highs and lows for us. We started out the week finding out that our neighbor had cut most of his hand off with a machete while working in the field across the street, and was fighting for his life in a San Pedro hospital. As we were driving into town, we passed an accident site where a man and his nine year old son were struck by a car as they rode a bike, and both were killed. Unlike the states where bodies are moved immediately, the bodies were left on the side of the road for hours, and it was pretty disturbing to see that. When we got to Sister Maria’s place, we were told that we wouldn’t be serving food that day because one of the children had died of cancer. That was a pretty low day for us… topped off by the girls seeing a mangled dog on the side of the road as they were walking home. Thankfully, Natalie and I missed that one.


We were able to take a day to go to a place called Pulhapanzak Falls that is nearby. It was pretty incredible and very beautiful. The girls were able to do a zip line over the falls, but it was a little too high for me. The girls and I did go on a very exciting hike that our guide told us was “an easy hike for ANYONE”. Well, apparently the guide is accustomed to different people than us, because the hike was anything but easy. We realized that we were in for an adventure when the guide told us to follow him, then jumped off of a ledge into a swirling pool of water below. We couldn’t see where we were going when we walked behind the falls, and it was difficult to breathe with the water falling on us. We had to alternate walking and swimming to get behind the falls, and then we were led through a narrow opening up to a little cave. We ended up going into several small caves, and it was a pretty cool adventure. Chantalle and Jenn also took a hike up the mountain by us and took some beautiful pictures of our neighborhood.

Jenn and Chantalle on top of Mount Nalgas

Pulhapanzak falls!

Zipline over the falls!

Jumping into the swirling water - not quite as scary as it looks

We are thankful that my cousin Chris returned safely from the states, but are sad that the wonderful team from Albuquerque and Jenn only have one week left here. It has been such a breath of fresh air to have them all here serving alongside us. Jenn is really spunky and encourages us to do things that we probably wouldn’t try on our own, which has helped us adjust to life here. There are definitely going to be some big holes left when they all leave.

Our neighbor, Mario, took us out on the lake in a rowboat

We are forming closer relationships with people here, which has been really cool. The kids take turns going to church with us every Wednesday and Sunday, and we all pile into a taxi. Last week we had eleven people in a taxi the size of a Ford Taurus! We have to regulate how many kids we have over at a time or we can easily get overwhelmed by the children. We use the same taxi driver every day, Alexander, and he is really friendly and helpful, coming to our house whenever we call, and taking us all over town. He invited us to his house to meet his wife and daughter, and we really enjoyed meeting them today.

We have started the feeding program at church, but need more financial support to expand the program, so if anyone would like to help out in that way, it would be greatly appreciated both by us and by the local people who will benefit. Many of the people here only have one meal a day, and some go days without any food, which is such a foreign concept to us Americans, who have more than enough to eat and don’t really know what it means to be hungry. It breaks my heart to see children with tummy aches because they haven’t eaten that day, and they are so excited to get some good nutritious food in their bellies. We never throw any food away here – between the starving children and the starving dogs, someone is always happy to get any food that we can’t use.

Neighbor kids, Cindy, Otto, & Franklin

Please continue to pray for us as we are working with Sister Maria and our church family, and also as we get to know our neighbors better. We have been blessed with pretty good health and feel safe in our home here. We are thankful for good relations with our neighbors, and can see God working here – the people are very receptive to us and to God, and we are really encouraged about our future here.